The Spirit Remains
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Oneshot. He bought the house in spite of the story that surrounded it. He didn't even know that he might wish it were true. Carol, Daryl.


**AN: This was a one shot that was inspired by the Tumblr prompt for Caryl and living/ghost AU.**

 **As always, I own nothing from the Walking Dead. That won't change.**

 **I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Daryl had bought the house despite the local lore that the place was haunted. He'd bought it despite the fact that he hadn't even seen it. What he needed was a house. He needed a place to go, a place to hang his hat. And this place? It was in a town where not a single damn soul knew him and it came with an incredible price tag, fully furnished.

Even if he lived with the ghost of a three hundred pound, loud-mouthed, old trucker, the house was pretty damn perfect to him.

The first time that he saw it was when he pulled his truck between the brick columns and up the slightly broken driveway toward the house. He stopped in front of the house and got out, looking up at his new palace. Immediately, it was easy to see why everyone thought it was haunted.

The house had once been beautiful. It was clear. The two story house had probably once been one of the most magnificent houses in this area, actually. It had been left alone too long, though. It had been neglected.

The realtor hadn't told him too much about it. As a small town, and not entirely credible, realtor, he'd told Daryl something that sounded more like a legend than any actual fact about the house. It had belonged to a man—some something or other in the town that had been somewhat important. Daryl hadn't paid much attention. Something had happened. The man had been married. His wife had died.

 _Or she'd been murdered._

The man had disappeared. He was just gone. He'd never been heard from again—a typical line from legends and fairy tales, but in this case it was apparently true. The bank, then, had ended up with the house because the wife was dead and the husband was gone. There was no one else to take responsibility for the house. But the bank, of course, hadn't wanted the house.

Daryl had stopped listening then. He'd been packing everything he owned into the two old suitcases he got at the second hand store for ten bucks a piece. Everything else that wouldn't fit into those bags had gone into trash backs and a couple of cardboard boxes that the people at the grocery store had given him. The house was fully furnished, that's what he'd been told, so everything that he had? Everything he was bothering to take with him? Every last little bit of it had fit neatly into the back of his truck.

He'd only listened to the realtor again, briefly, when the man had detailed that there had been one person in the house since the bank took it over—since the old man disappeared—but whether the person had rented or bought hadn't mattered. They'd abandoned the property, given it right on back to the bank as a present or however the hell that worked, after one night in the house.

Spooked, no doubt, by the stories they'd been told. A couple of boards creaked—and from the looks of the place there'd be a hell of a lot of creaking going on—a shutter slapped against a window, and that poor, scared asshole was out the door like a flash.

Daryl wasn't going to be spooked, though. He'd seen enough shit in his life that he figured nothing could scare him. Something dead sure as shit couldn't scare him. Hell—if he had a ghost? He'd probably try to train the son of a bitch to do tricks. It would make his life a hell of a lot easier.

Clearly, though, if this ghost did tricks, cleaning wasn't one of them.

Daryl reached into the back of the truck and plucked out one of the suitcases. He dragged it over the side of the truck and considered, for a moment, whether or not it was a good idea to leave all his worldly possessions in the back of the truck while he went inside and inspected his new abode. This town, though, was such a sleepy little place that he couldn't figure anyone would fuck with his stuff. Truth be told, even if they took everything he owned, Daryl would probably figure they needed it more than him. It would be a good bit of effort for them to move it all—and he'd probably be out no more than fifty bucks.

Daryl took the suitcase and mounted the front porch steps. His foot went slightly through the half rotted wood of the third step and he cursed it under his breath. This place was perfect, price wise, but that was a good damn thing because he'd be sinking more than a few bucks and some sweat into fixing it up if he was going to make it less than a death trap that would land him of being as celestial as his new roommate.

He found the key just where Mr. Donalds said he'd find it, inside the mouth of a weird looking little fucker—stone statue of course—that was sitting on the porch. It was safe to leave the key there. Nobody was breaking into this house. Of course, if they'd had a mind to do it, Daryl thought they could probably break down the door just by running into it at a full tilt.

He let himself inside and the door swung open with loud creak and stopped itself. He stepped in and kicked it back shut with his foot and it closed with a loud thunk.

He was in perfect darkness. If Daryl Dixon was a man to get spooked, which he wasn't, right now would be the perfect time to do it.

But he didn't, because he wasn't that kind of person. Instead, he abandoned the bag and fumbled around in the dark until he found a lamp. He switched it on. The electricity was working. Good. Mr. Donalds had helped with that. He'd told him who to call to get the water and electricity turned on. He'd offered him the number of a cable company, but that was an expense that Daryl didn't need right now.

Besides—maybe he could teach the ghost to sing and dance. He could sing a little toon and do a little jig.

Daryl laughed to himself at the thought and started around to pull back the tattered curtains at the windows. A couple of the panes were broken—those were going to cost him. All of them were filthy. Daryl hated to clean, and he could live in a pretty messy damn environment—but even he was going to have to clean this place. There was enough dust on everything that just his steps stirred it up, and there were cobwebs in the corners that were so large he thought he should get the opportunity to charge the spiders rent.

Daryl hated to clean, but this place needed it. It hadn't been cleaned, in his opinion, since the old man had offed his old lady.

He didn't acquaint himself with the house any more at the moment. He'd gotten there late and the time was ticking away from him. He wanted all of his shit moved in before the sun went down and he wanted to at least find a grocery store of some sort and pick up something to eat before he was stuck there for the night with nothing to quell his hunger or thirst.

So he stepped out the door to quickly get to work bringing the last items in, leaving them just inside the door, and he made a mental grocery list while he worked. He thought it was unfortunate that his ghost pal hadn't shown up as of yet—because if he had? Daryl might've offered to pick him up something from the store. As it stood, he'd just have to offer to share with the phantom friend should it show up peckish.

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Daryl did a half ass cleaning job when he got back from the grocery store. Nothing he could do tonight would put so much as a dent in what was here. Mostly, he shook out the sheets on the bed in the master bedroom, beat the quilts over the side of the porch, and made a running mental list of what needed to be repaired in the house.

With no cable to watch, he sat on the bed—the only place he could guarantee now that he wouldn't get covered in dust—and scarfed down a sandwich he put together on a paper plate, a bag of sour cream and onion chips, and a small package of cookies. He washed it down with a beer, left the trash on the floor by the bed because he had forgotten to buy trash bags, and then he'd gone back to the fridge for another beer. He would finish the six pack tonight, alone, with any luck.

While he nursed the other beers, Daryl walked around the house. He hadn't even seen the entirety of it yet. As he toured the house that was now his home—a house at least six times as big as anything he'd ever lived in before—he looked in one direction and the next just taking in the amount of _stuff_ that came with the house.

Donalds hadn't been lying. When the old-man-axe-murder skipped town? He'd left everything behind—and that was a lot of shit to leave behind. If Daryl was lucky? He had half a chance of finding some cash stashed somewhere. He might even, if he tried, have a chance to sell some of the shit there to make enough to pay for the numerous repairs that would have to be made.

Everything, it seemed, was just like it had been when the old man had skipped town. Knick knacks gathered dust on shelves. Daryl stopped by one table, shooed away a shiny black spider that was building an ornate web there, and picked up a small notepad—the long dried out pen lying near it. On the pad, written in very nice handwriting with large, loopey letters, was the start of what appeared to be a to-do list that involved making some call about cleaning.

He laughed to himself. The cleaning call, clearly, had never been made.

But judging from the rest of the list? It was probably something more like dry cleaning that needed to be picked up.

One of the words wasn't finished, effectively ending the list, as though the person writing it had been interrupted mid word.

In one of the rooms—Daryl had long since given up trying to name what they might be—Daryl came face to face with a large picture hanging on the wall. It was sepia. Or maybe it was black and white and simply colored differently with age. Daryl wasn't a photographer. He regarded it while he nursed one of the beers that he was working his way through. He didn't even know if the thing was a portrait, which is what he might have called it, because it was a picture and not a painting—and he didn't know if it made a difference.

It was large. A wedding picture. He stood, face to face, with the old man who had skipped town. Slightly overweight, but not obese. Stern expression. He didn't look like a man who'd just gotten married. He didn't look like a man who had just found the best thing in his life. The woman next to him—the woman supposedly murdered, or dead at the very least—looked happier than he did.

Daryl thought it was a shame, too, that a woman that looked like that had been killed. It was sad for a woman that pretty to be taken out of a world full of so many less attractive people who continued to amble about and procreate.

She had blue eyes that Daryl didn't think existed in paint colors—which was why it had to be a portrait, though she was pretty enough that he could have imagined someone would've wanted to immortalize her in paint. She had auburn hair. White teeth and a sincere smile. She was happy to be married. She was happy to be married to the stern asshole that sat beside her.

When that picture was taken? This house was probably the dream house of that little woman. The man? Was probably her dream man.

When the picture was taken? She had no idea that he'd be her murderer, and that this house—in one way or another—would be something of a tomb for her.

It was a damn shame. But there was nothing Daryl could do about it. So he bid her and her stern faced murderer-husband goodnight, and he continued his tour, nursing his beer.

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 _Crying. Sobbing. Soft and low and nearby._

Daryl opened his eyes. He looked around. He was almost in complete darkness. The only light that he had, really, was the artificial light coming from the street lamps that lined the road in front of the house on tall black poles. It was faint, and it would've never filtered in at all if he hadn't bothered to pull back the old curtains and clean the window in the bedroom as thoroughly as he could.

His eyes, though, adjusted quickly to the dim light thanks to the fact that they'd been closed to sleep.

The sobbing didn't stop, and Daryl jumped when he figured out where it was coming from. Daryl Dixon didn't spook easily, but he also wasn't accustomed to waking up with crying women standing less than three feet from him, fretting over...something.

He considered pinching himself, but that was something that people told you would wake you up—but he'd never woken himself from a dream in that way and he wasn't sure it actually worked.

"I'm sorry," she sobbed. "I'm sorry—I'll clean it up. I shouldn't have left it. I won't leave it again. I'm sorry."

She sounded like she was begging. And when Daryl blinked and focused on her more carefully, he realized that she was begging _him_. She continued to beg, too, her face turned down toward the floor. Daryl rolled to the side, realized she was looking at the pile of trash on the floor that he'd left the night before, and then he rolled back.

"Stop crying," he said.

The sound stopped. All sound stopped for a moment.

"Look at me," he said.

She did. The crying woman, three feet from him, looked at him. She was the woman from the picture on the wall downstairs. The hair, the eyes, the features—they were all the same. The only difference was that she wasn't smiling.

Daryl sat up quickly. This woman wasn't a ghost. She was a real woman. She was the most real woman that he'd ever seen. She looked every bit as real as the woman who'd popped her gum like it was the worst day of her life while she checked him out at the Stop and Save.

He wanted to talk to her. He wanted to tell her that he was sorry for making a mess of her bedroom—or of someone's bedroom. He wanted to know what she was doing there—how she'd lived there so long undetected.

But when he moved, she looked startled. She started shaking her head. She backed up. She covered her face with her hands.

"I'm sorry," she repeated again.

"Don't say you're..." Daryl started, but he never got it out. She turned, quickly, and fled from the room as though he'd come after her instead of simply shifting his weight slightly on the mattress.

Daryl sat there for a moment. He felt like he was covered in a cold sweat. He got out of the bed slowly, testing the floor beneath his feet, half expecting to float in his dreamlike state. The rug beneath is feet was rough—much rougher than it probably had been when it was new—and Daryl didn't remember ever having so many vivid sensations in a dream before.

He walked out into the hallway, black and dark and not lit by the small amount of light that filtered in through the bedroom window. He peered into the blackness, saw nothing but dark, and listened to the silence. That's all there was. There was nothing but silence.

He called out for the woman—not having any idea what her name might have been—but nothing responded back to him.

Nobody responded to him. Nobody responded, because there was nobody there to respond. As he started to come into himself, to fully wake, Daryl laughed at his own mind.

Daryl Dixon didn't spook, but his imagination was better than he'd given it credit for being. Enough talk of a ghostly roommate, a dusty old house, and one portrait of a beautiful woman that he thought he might have liked to know, and Daryl was waking himself up in the middle of the night and imagining that beautiful, eternally suffering women were seeking him out from the afterlife.

He shook his head, turned around, and returned to the large bed. Before he got in, though, he crossed the room and emptied one of his trashbags of clothes into one of the suitcases and returned to put the trash by the bed into the bag. He tied it up, as neatly as he could, and put it in the corner. He'd throw it out first thing in the morning.

Then he got into bed, closed his eyes, and hoped that the next time his imagination had half a mind to conjure him up a phantom female friend—with auburn curls and piercing blue eyes—she might be smiling as beautifully as she had in the picture that had inspired his imagination. After all—it was that smile that had left him wishing that he could meet her, if only for a second, and if only in a dream.


End file.
